Israel has a historic commitment to its Druze citizens and so the dangers besetting more than half a million of their distressed Syrian brethren on Jabal Druze, 88 km from its border, and 38 km from Jordan, confronts the Netanyahu government with a grave dilemma. Conceding to Israeli Druze leaders’ demand to send them arms would draw Israel out of its long abstention from direct involvement in the Syrian conflict. But refusing many thousands of Druze refugees admission, if put to flight by Islamists, is not an option, which may not be precluded anyway by sending weapons.

Israel’s wide-ranging military exercise this week had a hidden agenda of warning Tehran that Israel would not accept a fourth hostile army taking up position on its border if Iranian troops were sent to Syria.

The fall of Damascus and Baghdad, or large slices thereof, to the rapacious Islamic State, is no longer the subject of strategic forecasts, but here and now. It is the price the region is paying for President Barack Obama’s single-minded obsession with détente with Tehran and a nuclear accord. Ramadi’s fall in Iraq and Palmyra’s in Syria proved ISIS’s ability to rock the Middle East to its foundations. Watching the threats closing in, Jerusalem, Amman and Riyadh grasp they may have to contend alone – not just with Iran but also with ISIS.

The US Delta Special Operations raid that killed ISIS oil chief Abu Sayyaf Saturday, May 16, could not have taken place without prior US coordination with Damascus and Moscow. debkafile: Washington’s denial of coordination did not preclude a prior notice to Moscow, which then passed it on to Damascus. The operation therefore fixed another Middle East landmark: The US, Russia and the Assad regime pulled together for the first time against the Islamic State, for an operation that was more extensive than reported. Not one, but five top ISIS commanders, were killed

America’s first ground operation in the Syrian war targeted the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. On Saturday, May 16, Special Operations forces attacked an ISIS house in the Deir a-Zour district of eastern Syria, and killed the high-value Islamist commander and oil and gas chief, Abu Sayyaf, when he resisted capture. debkafile: Catching him alive was preferable in view of his importance to the Islamist group as overseer of the Syrian and Iraqi oil fields they have commandeered, and energy sales which net the group's war chest an estimated $5million a day.

The B-52H bomber which flew directly from the US to join a multilateral anti-terror exercise in Jordan was hardly the right weapon for swatting ISIS, but better suited for a strong message to Tehran and Damascus.

ISIS has pushed down from eastern Syria into the South reaching to within a stone’s throw of Israel’s Golan border. The jihadis conducted their first ambush against US-backed Syrian rebels near Quneitra, killing six officers and men.

Fear of ISIS drove the hitherto neutral Syrian Druzes into seeking support from Assad. He turned them over to the Revolutionary Guards and Hizballah who recruited them as Hizballah fighters and terrorists against Israel.

Behind the failed bombing attack on an Israeli military post in the northern Golan Sunday, April 26, hangs a big story: The bomb squad belonged to a new Druze militia, which Hizballah recruited, the Iranian Al Qods Brigades armed and whose mission was assigned by a Syrian intelligence master.

The coming DEBKA Weekly out next Friday shows this event to be a microcosm of Tehran’s tactics for muscling in on Syria’s million-strong Druze minority as the lever for broader regional dominion.

Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya TV reported Saturday, April 25, Israeli air strikes against Hizballah and Syrian targets in the Qalamoun Mts. on the Syrian-Lebanese border from April 22 to April 24. Neither Israeli nor Syrian officials confirm these reports. The IAF targets are described as the 155th, 65th and 92nd Brigades of the Syrian army and Hizballah, two Hizballah arms convoys and Syrian long-range missile bases or batteries. debkafile: The putative air strike may also have targeted Hizballah’s first ever airstrip for drones in the Lebanese Beqaa Valley.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s warning to Israel not to sell arms to Ukraine, in reprisal for his release of S-300 air defense missiles to Iran, adds a European dimension to the dispute by planting Israel squarely in the middle of the US-Russian Ukraine crisis. Putin’s implied threat to punish Israel by sending S-300s to Syria too follows his intelligence updates on tight US-Israeli military collaboration in two arenas: Syria and Ukraine. The S-300s have not yet been shipped to Iran. It depends on whether Obama decides to forge ahead with expanded military assistance to Kiev.

ISIS never tried to capture wide, open swathes of territory, only the main cities from which the Islamists have scarcely been dislodged. Rather than experiencing setbacks, they are still on the offensive, not going after Ramadi.

Barack Obama’s Iran policy, spectacularly challenged by Binyamin Netanyahu in his Congress speech Tuesday, March 3, is manifested 10,000 kilometers from Washington, in the Iranian-led Iraqi battle for Tikrit. Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff commented that day that the “Tikrit campaign… the most overt conduct of Iranian support …could turn out to be a positive thing.” debkafile: This US-Iranian partnership, which is mirrored in Syria, is alarming Israeli military chiefs because it brings the Iranian peril closer than ever before.

The US military is going to great lengths to deny that ISIS shot down the Jordanian Air Force F-16 which came down Wednesday, Dec. 24 over the northern Syrian town of Raqaa. First Lieutenant Muath al-Kasaesbeh, aged 27, was the first Arab pilot captured by the Islamic State. Jordanian tribal leaders and the US military are making intense efforts to keep the pilot, a member of the Bararsha tribe oif South Jordan, safe. Washington regards his fate as potentially pivotal to the continued participation of four Arab air forces in the war on ISIS.